Digital Eden’s promise is that all of your music, photo, and video files would be available to you from any room in the house. Your TV would be a giant iPod-like screen, letting you scroll through your collection to find whatever strikes your mood.
A media server can transform your home into this digital paradise. Typically, a main server incorporates the storage, while a “client” remotely accesses your music or video over the home’s wired or Wi-Fi network. (Currently, only wired networks are suitable for video streaming.)
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What We Think
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| Though it can’t record TV shows, LE&AP’s potential as a movie server and “value” pricing make it attractive for distributed A/V and music. |
Its music management needs improvement, but you’ll love using this supercharged DVR to access TV recordings and your source components from any room. |
With the digital genie out of his bottle, traditional A/V distribution models are being tossed out the window. Once music, photography, or video has undergone digital conversion, it’s easily sorted, shared, and shifted to other places. And the media server takes center stage in this performance.
One very cool bonus servers bring to the garden is their upgradable software and firmware. This allows the manufacturer to improve operation and provide new features, typically through the server’s regular Internet connection. What a breath of fresh air compared with the “buy a new box” obsolescence of most A/V components!
But if there’s been one serpent in this digital Eden, it’s been pricing that has placed media servers beyond many budgets. So when we discovered two new systems by Leviton and DigitalDeck had fallen from the tree at real-world prices, we had to take a bite!
Leviton
A plug & play media server
Ask your local building-supply store about Leviton, and they’ll likely point you towards lighting controls and wall-plate switch covers. However, Leviton’s leadership in residential structured wiring has positioned it to partner with Dedicated Devices, Inc. (DDi) and deliver a system that ties entertainment and structured wiring together.
The goal of LE&AP, or Leviton Entertainment & Applications Platform, is ambitious: combine home networking with media storage in a system that allows easy access to digital entertainment throughout the home and is simple enough for even DIYers to install. The system’s hub is the Digital Distribution Center (DDC), which is designed to mount inside the structured-wiring panel that typically serves as the central cable-distribution point of a wired home. The DDC incorporates an 8-port router with built-in firewall and a 120-gigabyte (GB) hard drive. Smartly, Leviton included four USB 2.0 jacks for future upgrades like adding extra hard drives to expand content storage. You can add Leviton’s 120- or 300-GB media modules ($399 and $699) for a maximum of 1.5 terabytes.
To pull media from the DDC to a remote location in your home, you need the LE&AP Digital Player (one comes with the DDC at the $2,549 base price; $299 for each additional). Smaller than the new Harry Potter novel but in a far more stylish package, the player connects to the DDC over the network and sends A/V signals to systems located in each room.
SETUP Given the need to move video files around the house, Leviton assumes that you’re starting with a wired Ethernet network, along with broadband Internet service. Installing the system required removing my existing router and replacing it with the DDC, connecting the Ethernet cables that run to various rooms of my home where computers and Digital Players would be located, jacking in the cable modem, and powering it all up. The DDC automatically assigned IP addresses to all connected devices on my network.
There is no optical drive in the system for directly ripping CDs or DVDs, so transferring files to the DDC — or “harvesting media,” as the manual calls it — is all done through your PC. This required downloading and installing the DDi Media Manager software, which is compatible only with Windows 2000 or XP. Once it was installed, I transferred files both wired and wirelessly with no glitches. (Leviton subsequently embedded the Media Manager software in the DDC, eliminating the need to install it separately on your PC.) I installed one Digital Player in my home theater using DVI digital video to the TV and coaxial digital audio to my receiver, while another player in my bedroom fed a TV with S-video and analog audio.
One of the slickest features is the ability to quickly configure the system so that files stored on the DDC can be easily accessed from any remote computer with Internet service. This provided a great way for me to quickly share photos with my mom, who was able to retrieve my DDC content from her own home.
PERFORMANCE After the “harvesting” was complete, I took this baby for a spin. The interface is simple and straightforward, with clear headers for selecting Music, Photo, or Video files. I headed to Music. The system supports MP3, WMA, and uncompressed WAV files and automatically catalogs your collection by Genre, Artist, Album, and Track.
Saying that I was impressed with this feature is an understatement. It’s this cataloging ability that really distinguishes LE&AP from other servers. Other systems rely on previously stored metadata, or need an entire album to identify tracks correctly. But LE&AP looks at various criteria on every individual file, then reaches out to Gracenote’s Web database to identify the song and correct or fill in missing details. It correctly identified a staggering 99% of my songs! Even horribly mislabeled tracks from those Napster glory days appeared on the DDC menu with all information miraculously intact. If your collection is in a shambles, the DDC can be your musical Sherlock Holmes.
Two more cool music features were added as we went to press. Embedded Gracenote Playlist software now lets you create instant custom playlists from your stored music based on a single seed song. And integrated Rhapsody support lets users with a subscription to that Internet music service access their Rhapsody online libraries from any Digital Player (though your networked PC still needs to be turned on for account verification). For $10 a month, that gives the system instant access to over a million songs!
Photos and videos definitely benefited from the DVI connection, appearing noticeably sharper than with the component- and S-video connections. Unlike many other systems, LE&AP allows you to play music during a photo slideshow.
If you have a TV tuner in your PC, you can transfer recorded programming to the DDC for viewing around the house. But there’s no built-in tuner or other mechanism to directly record TV shows to the drive — a significant drawback. Nor will the system currently support Windows Media Video (WMV) or DivX, two PC-based video file formats.
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The Short Form
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| LEVITON-LIN.COM / 800-323-8920 / $2,549 / DDC, 12 5/8 x 3 5/8 x 7 5/8 IN / DIGITAL PLAYER, 10.125 x 1.5 x 6.875 IN |
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Plus
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| •Easy to install. •Music file recognition topnotch. •Movie archiving and distribution. •Access content from any remote PC. |
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Minus
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| •PC required for loading content. •No TV tuner/DVR functions. •Spotty remote-control performance. |
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Key Features
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| •Built-in router for shared Internet access and home networking •Distributes music, photo, and video files to any TV or audio system in the house •Expandable storage •DVI video and Dolby Digital audio outputs |
My review sample came preloaded with a tantalizing hint of just how this system could be used for that Holy Grail of killer apps: DVD distribution. Stored inconspicuously was a Superbit transfer of Spider-Man 2, probably there so I could verify the system’s ability to stream and display high-quality video files. Opening this produced a pristine picture and had Dolby Digital EX 6.1-channel sound erupting from my speakers. There’s debate currently about the legality of ripping DVD movies you own to a server or portable device for personal viewing. But LE&AP recognizes MPEG-1, -2, and -4 video files (and is ungradable for future formats), so you’ll be ready when the coast is clear. Add some extra storage and you’ll have a $3,000 server that’ll stream movies to any room in the house!
The Linux-based operating system performed reliably and didn’t require any frustrating restarts. The remote control, however, was inconsistent. Sometimes it would work, other times it wouldn’t, and I often found myself pressing buttons multiple times. A good universal remote would likely solve this problem.
BOTTOM LINE All in all, LE&AP is a reliable and easy-to-use system for moving photos, music, and video around your house. Though the inability to directly record TV shows is frustrating, and adding anything to the system requires a trip to the computer, LE&AP’s music prowess and promise as a DVD server will put you in a forgiving mood.
DigitalDeck
Whole-house DVR on steroids
Having minisystems scattered throughout the home is commonplace today. It’s not unusual to find a home theater, a separate bedroom system, and maybe a TV in the kitchen, as at my house. More often than not, the TiVo hard-disk recorder, DVD player, satellite receiver, cable box, and other source components are tied to one room, meaning you can’t watch everything, everywhere. But what if every TV had access to every source in your home? Think about it — you could start a DVD in the living room and finish it in the bedroom. Or be able to tap all those shows you TiVo’d in the den while you’re tidying up the kitchen. Now throw in access to your digital music, photos, and videos, and you’ve got a good idea what DigitalDeck’s DDen Entertainment Network offers.
A base DDen system consists of the MX 1000 server, which has a 200-GB hard drive, and two eDecks placed in remote rooms. An additional eDeck can be purchased for $739. Your TVs, audio systems, and source components connect to the eDecks, which pull content from the server as desired and make your sources available to the network for playback in another room.
SETUP Installing the DigitalDeck system is a little involved, but fortunately my review sample arrived with the company’s senior project manager — a real person! — to guide me through the process. If I was an ordinary consumer, I’d likely have the assistance of my dealer, though an experienced enthusiast could probably handle the job alone.
The MX 1000 server has no router functions (which is typical of media servers), so it connects to any available port on your existing router and can be placed wherever you stow your router. On powering up, it assimilates itself into your network automatically and is ready to go.
My review setup included the current maximum number of three eDecks — sleek, gloss-black boxes with a sexy blue LED. Each can support up to four A/V sources, which are controlled by the eDeck via an infrared (IR) blaster. One input supports S-video and the other three composite video only; the system can’t pass high-def or digital video signals. The eDeck has component-video and digital audio outputs (both optical and coaxial) to run to your TV and audio system.
We connected the cable box in my home theater to one of the eDecks along with the Escient DVDM-300 DVD manager I reviewed in June (see “Serve It Up!”). I connected the standalone cable tuner in my bedroom to another eDeck. The third eDeck connected to my kitchen iCEBOX — a combination LCD TV, DVD player, and Internet browser (see “Kitchen Cool Factor”). Basic configuration is required for each eDeck, such as naming it for easy identification on the onscreen menus, specifying your cable/satellite provider and channel lineup, and identifying components in order to load the proper IR codes from the onboard library.
PERFORMANCE The MX 1000 appears under “My Network Places” on networked computers, and files are added in the standard drag-and-drop manner. Sadly, video files recorded via the system can’t be transferred off the server. This is a real bummer, since burning recorded TV shows to a DVD or transferring them to a portable player would be a great bonus.
If you’ve never lived with a TV channel guide, it will be like manna from heaven. The guide lists what’s playing on every channel — with descriptions of each program — and peers up to 12 days ahead. A cool Find feature searches for media on the server or for upcoming TV programs. This let me track down Morgan “Super Size Me” Spurlock’s new show, 30 Days.
Like a super-sized TiVo, the MX 1000 records everything that’s being watched throughout the house. This delivers full DVR functionality — pausing and rewinding — for live TV, DVDs, or whatever. Each eDeck pulls its own stream, meaning three users could be enjoying the same program simultaneously but watching different points in the program. And with up to three separate TV tuners supported, you’ll be time-shifting to your heart’s delight! However, since each eDeck can encode only one program at a time, if a source is being watched in one room, no other sources connected to that eDeck can be accessed from that or any other room.
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The Short Form
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| DIGITALDECK.COM / 650-413-6060 / $3,250 / MX 1000, 10.75 x 2.5 x 11.5 IN / eDECK, 11.75 x 2.25 x 5.5 IN |
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Plus
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| •Lets you watch and control any video source on any TV. •House-wide DVR function and control. •Free 12-day program guide. •Excellent recorded video quality. |
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Minus
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| •Insufficient music sorting. •Supports only MP3 music or MPEG-2 video files. •Single encoder limits simultaneous source access to one component per eDeck. •Supports three eDecks maximum. |
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Key Features
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| •200-GB hard drive for content storage •DVR with free channel guide •View sources located anywhere in the house on any TV •Stream music, photo, and video files |
Previously, DVD enjoyment was limited to my living room, where my surround system is located. With the addition of an eDeck, I was able to distribute movies from my Escient DVD manager throughout the house, adding tremendous value to the system. Moreover, starting a movie — or any video source — in one room, pausing, then resuming it in another room without missing a beat is trés cool! A DVD can be recorded while it is playing, but since the program guide breaks recording times into 2-hour blocks, long films are recorded as two separate files. Picture quality was great, though only stereo audio is recorded.
Music management can be good or disappointing, depending on how music is stored on your computer. If files are neatly sorted into artist and album subfolders, as in “Music: Coldplay: X & Y: Track Titles,” they will transfer and be presented to you that way on the eDeck onscreen menus. However, if your music is all tossed into one folder, like mine, the system will only present your files alphabetically by artist (with track and album information). Files can be manually reorganized, however. Some other caveats: playlists can be created only on your computer — not from the eDeck interface — random play isn’t an option, and only MP3 files are supported (no WMA, WAV, or other popular formats).
Controlling devices located in different rooms requires remote commands to be routed through the eDeck in the room you’re in and sent over the network. This means you have to use DigitalDeck’s remote to control your source components (or transfer DigitalDeck’s codes into a universal remote). To operate so many devices, the remote is festooned with smallish buttons, and without any backlighting, low-light operation can be tricky. While the built-in IR library is extensive, my Escient and iCEBOX weren’t included. Currently, the system is unable to learn new codes in the field, and remotes for components not in the database must be briefly lent to DigitalDeck so the library can be updated and the update posted for all users. Not exactly convenient!
BOTTOM LINE The DigitalDeck system is easy and fun to use. “I’m ready for bed” no longer has to mean, “Movie’s over.” If streaming audio files is paramount, this might not be the system for you — at least until DDeck upgrades the file management. But if components are spread around your home and you do a lot of TV recording, the DDen Entertainment Network demands a look.